Our relationship to Beethoven is a deep and paradoxical one. For many musicians, he represents a kind of holy grail: His music has an intensity, rigor, and profundity which keep us in its thrall, and it is perhaps unequalled in the interpretive, technical, and even spiritual challenges it poses to performers. At the same time, Beethoven’s music is casually familiar to millions of people who do not attend concerts or consider themselves musically inclined. Two hundred years after his death, he is everywhere in the culture, yet still represents its summit.
This course takes an inside-out look at the 32 piano sonatas from the point of view of a performer. Each lecture will focus on one sonata and an aspect of Beethoven’s music exemplified by it. (These might include: the relationship between Beethoven the pianist and Beethoven the composer; the critical role improvisation plays in his highly structured music; his mixing of extremely refined music with rougher elements; and the often surprising ways in which the events of his life influenced his compositional process and the character of the music he was writing.) The course will feature some analysis and historical background, but its perspective is that of a player, not a musicologist. Its main aim is to explore and demystify the work of the performer, even while embracing the eternal mystery of Beethoven’s music itself.
This season's Curtis courses are sponsored by Linda Richardson in loving memory of her husband, Dr. Paul Richardson.
The Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation supports Curtis's lifelong learning initiatives.

Reviews

JN

Excellent coverage of the essentials. Provided me with a lot of understanding that I didn't find elsewhere. I would recommend this to anyone interested in knowing about the sonatas.

JM

Oct 16, 2015

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

I highly recommend this course to anyone that wants to look DEEPER into music. Believe me, after you are done with this course. You will see classical music completely different.

From the lesson

Op. 101

This lecture explores the Sonata Op. 101, commonly thought to be the first sonata that belongs to the late period. Major topics include the first movement’s unusual harmonic instability, and the way in which this becomes a source of the music’s character; the way in which the sonata’s scope expands as it goes along, which helps clarify its status as a late period work, and the sonata’s great influence on later composers, Schumann and Mendelssohn in particular.

Taught By

Jonathan Biss

Transcript

[music] So, having announced itself so thrillingly, the recapitulation then mostly follows an expected path. There is one minor surprise: the second theme coming in a subdominant [music], but this is related to it having been in the tonic in the exposition. Honestly, it’s not that interesting or that significant: we don’t need to worry about it. Otherwise, we travel the same road we did in the exposition, ending on that same soft cadence, now in the tonic. [music] Again, 5-1, but not in a way that brings any finality. In search of that elusive finality, Beethoven repeats that five-note figure [music] over and over again, in the bass. Instead of bringing us closer to conclusion, however, it takes us away from A major yet again. [music] And now, suddenly, we are back in the world of the opening movement. The material all comes from the present movement, but the uncertainty is in itself a reminiscence. We have a halting question. [music] Followed by another. [music] And another. [music] We have now made our precarious way back towards A major, but once again over a stubborn dominant pedal. [music] It’s as if Beethoven knows that a movement of this exuberance demands a hugely emphatic conclusion, but he can’t find his way to one. Beethoven does finally abandon that dominant pedal after a long while, with a passage that leads to what is first a very weak – a deliberately weak – cadence. [music] The weakness is on account of two separate issues. First of all, melodically, instead of being E–A, 5-1 [music], it is E–C-sharp, 5-3 [music]. But most of all, it’s because harmonically, instead of 5-1, it reads mostly as 5–absence. [music] The A is played, but only in constant alternation with the G-sharp. [music] It sounds like a slow trill, and with trills, 99% of the time, we experience the lower note as the main note. [music] So the A doesn’t have a life of its own – it’s simply a part of the G-sharp’s resonance. In short, this is a cadence, but a very, very weak, unfulfilling one. It's frustrated, and because it's unfulfilled, it creates anticipation. The anticipation is heightened when Beethoven repeats it. [music] And again. [music] And then, finally. [music] This is absolutely vintage Beethoven: when he finally gives us resolution, it’s on an epic scale. The most famous example of this is the 5th Symphony, which ends with nothing short of 29 measures of uninterrupted C major. What happens here is obviously less extreme, but the hammering home of those 7 chords not only provides the inconclusive last two phrases with an answer, but puts the cap on a work whose trajectory, rather than the far more common darkness-to-light, is doubt to certainty. This happens again in the final movement of Beethoven’s last completed work, the Quartet Opus 135, which is designed around the question – actually printed under the notes in the score: "Muss Es sein?" – "Must it be?" And then the inevitable reply: “Es muss sein!” – it must be! In the case of the Sonata Opus 101, this is the trajectory not just of one movement, but of the entire work. This is a profound demonstration not only of the way Beethoven’s late period works build all the way to their conclusion, but of the way in which they have a message. Not in any political, or even programmatic sense. But one can see in this sonata, in how it has been painstakingly constructed, that Beethoven viewed struggle as a virtue. That he believed that it brought with it not only enlightenment, but pure, unadulterated joy – the kind of joy one doesn't understand or appreciate without also living the struggle. That is the very essence of Beethoven, and it helps explain why this sonata – one of his most mysterious instrumental works – is also among his most profoundly satisfying. [music]

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